In a democracy, silence is not golden; it is condonance in the face of injustices; it is fear, where the thought of reprisal fosters control – Rodney A. Davis

RICHMOND – A federal judge in Virginia ruled Monday that a key provision of the nation’s sweeping health-care overhaul is unconstitutional, the most significant legal setback so far for President Obama’s signature domestic initiative.

U.S. District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson found that Congress could not order individuals to buy health insurance.

In a 42-page opinion, Hudson said the provision of the law that requires most individuals to get insurance or pay a fine by 2014 is an unprecedented expansion of federal power that cannot be supported by Congress’s power to regulate interstate trade.

“Neither the Supreme Court nor any federal circuit court of appeals has extended Commerce Clause powers to compel an individual to involuntarily enter the stream of commerce by purchasing a commodity in the private market,” he wrote. “In doing so, enactment of the [individual mandate] exceeds the Commerce Clause powers vested in Congress under Article I [of the Constitution.]

Here is the irony in granting this exclusion to the Affordable Care Act… there isn’t a State in the Union that does not require you to carry some form of automotive insurance to drive your car on that State’s streets and Highways.

States require you to have automotive insurance. It protects other drivers from damages in the unlikely event that you are involved in an accident – your liability insurance insures that the other vehicle will get the repairs its driver needs to put his car back in service.

Hospitals should have the same protection against individuals coming into the Emergency Room under an ’emergency’ status and receiving care that they would not ordinarily receive without some form of Health Care Insurance.